A social learning explanation for age-related changes in children's conceptual behavior

A social learning explanation for children's conceptual development is proposed. Recent training research on conservation is discussed, and it is concluded that it fails to support three key assumptions underlying Piaget's theory (a) Children are able to learn to conserve without being “in transition,” (b) nonconservation experiences are successful in promoting developmentally immature cognitive functioning, and (c) there is evidence of inconsistencies in children's cognitive functioning across tasks assessing the same cognitive stage. Two aspects of children's conservation responding are explained according to a social learning position: decalages and the shift from perceptual cues to quantitative cues. This explanation involves consideration of cognitive factors such as prior rule learning as well as impinging social experience.     

An alternative to social learning theory: Discussion of papers by Whitehurst,Zimmerman, and Brody

Social learning theory, in explaining cognitive development, fails to account for rule invariance in the face of capricious and informationally impoverished experience, offers no explanatory mechanism for the process by which systems of abstract rules are acquired, and offers less flexibility than alternative explanations based on operations and reflective abstraction.     

Latent variable models: Applications in education

Most theories in the social sciences involve relationships among constructs which are not directly observable. Behavioral measures exist of all constructs, such as intelligence, creativity, and other cognitive traits, aggressiveness, sociability, and other personality and affective characteristics; but these observed measures are usually assumed to be imperfect indicators of the (presumed) underlying construct. The imperfections exist because of errors of measurement and because the observed behavior may be influenced by other underlying constructs in addition to the one of primary interest. Statistical methods, called latent variable models, have been developed to provide rigorous tests of theories involving unobserved variables. This paper describes the major types of latent variable models, shows how they can be applied in educational research, and gives representative examples of their use from the literature.     

The contributions of social learning to language acquisition

Psycholinguists have often lost sight of the functions of language in their search for structural regularities. This paper focuses on three social learning variables whose roles in language development have often been discounted. Feedback or reinforcement has been said to be unrelated to grammatical development since parents tend to reinforce the truth instead of the grammar of their children's utterances. But evidence is presented showing that feedback for the child's comprehension responses can affect production of grammatical forms. Modeling or imitation has been said to be unimportant in grammatical development because most children's utterances are novel and because the frequency of imitation appears unrelated to the rate of language growth. But evidence is presented showing how many utterances can be both imitative and novel and showing that the role of these selective imitations has not been assessed properly in many studies. Contextual constraints on language have been considered unimportant in many psycholinguistic theories. But evidence is presented showing that communicative competence is related critically to the ability to adjust utterances to contextual constraints and that the language of the young child is deficient in this regard. The educational advantages of a functional analysis of language are discussed.     

A social learning explanation of moral development

This paper presents a social learning explanation of moral development. From a social learning perspective, children abstract an array of generative rules which guide moral judgments and behaviors. Unfortunately, this social learning position has been misunderstood. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to clarify these misunderstandings and to discuss the educational implications of a social learning approach to moral development.     

Educology: The theory of educational practice

The relationship between psychology and education may be expressed in terms of two general models: the traditional hierarchical model, according to which psychology is the “parent” discipline; and a parallel model, in which the relationship between “pure” theory and its application is metaphoric rather than paradigmatic. The hierarchical model, however, does not hold even for such a “tight” area as behavior modification, let alone for educational practice in general.Educational practice, as a professional enterprise, should be guided by a consistent set of constructs taken from the practitioner's universe of discourse. The professionalization of education has been delayed because of attempts, mostly vain, to guide practice by applying constructs derived from other disciplines. Other disciplines, notably psychology, can be useful for education but in a metaphoric sense only. “Educology” is suggested as a convenient term for the set of constructs that should give coherence to educational decision-making.     

Life goals and academic interests as predictors of extracurricular activities of secondary school sophomores

The life goals and interests of eighth-graders were examined in relation to their reported extracurricular activities in secondary school. In 1969, 204 females and 178 males, attending three feeder schools, completed the Vocational Sentence Completion Blank, a semiprojective measure of life goals, values, quests, aspirations hopes, preferences, and concerns. For the Milwaukee Academic Interest Inventory, which measures curricular interests, the complete test records of 183 females and 150 males were available. In 1971, all subjects reported about their participation in six secondary school activities. Approximately two-thirds of the 29 VSCB categories and all 7 MAII variables were predictive at a low level of association. The statistically significant relations between eighth-grade predictors and specific extracurricular activities in the first year of secondary school seemed reasonable. Implications for adolescent development were discussed.     

Peer priorities and the impact of academic achievement

The relationship between level of academic achievement and student self-concept was investigated. Based upon recent hypotheses concerning sex differences in the priority of academic accomplishments, it was predicted that the self-concept of older males and younger females would be most strongly influenced by the level of academic competence. This hypothesis was supported only for the male group. It was argued that younger males rather than older females were most debilitated by sex-role stereotypes.     

Reprint requesting: A possible adjunct to citation analysis for judging research: Preliminary questions and findings

Interest in the quality of published research is evident across the range of disciplines including education. Several comprehensive studies either sponsored or published by the American Educational Research Association attest to this fact. In the sciences, citation analysis is attracting interest as a methodology for assessing research. The procedure has both theoretical and practical promise. The present study considers an overlooked source of information, reprint requesting, as a possible adjunct to citation analysis. The study stems from the questionnaire responses of 24 reprint requestors for an article by the authors. Requestor characteristics, motives, and reprint uses are considered. Implications for further research are advanced.     

Abused, neglected, and nonmaltreated preschoolers'' ability to discriminate emotions in others: The effects of IQ

Sixty children between the ages of 3 and 5 participated in this study of children's ability to discriminate emotions in others. Twelve children were identified as neglected, and eight were identified as abused. Two additional groups of nonmaltreated children included one comparable on IQ and one with significantly higher intelligence. All children were given three tests: The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, the Borke Interpersonal Awareness Test and the Rothenberg Social Sensitivity Test. The results showed that normal children with the higher IQ were significantly better able to identify and discriminate other people's emotions from picture stories than were the other groups of children, who were not different from one another on any of the measures. Furthermore, when IQ was covaried in the ANOVAS, all group-differences disappeared. It was suggested that previous studies demonstrating inferior performance on measures of social cognition by maltreated children may have been due to the failure to control for IQ.     

Evaluation of Jigsaw,a cooperative learning technique

Cooperative learning techniques have been promoted for the development of academic and social competencies. One such technique, Jigsaw, creates cooperation by structuring student interdependence through the learning task, rather than through the grading system. A process and outcome evaluation of Jigsaw was conducted. Eleven teachers of fifth-grade classes received Jigsaw in-service training and conducted Jigsaw in their classes over a school year. Students in 13 other fifth-grade classes served as a comparison group. Students received a pretest and a post-test assessing attitudes toward self, peers, and school, and achievement and attendance records were collected. The process evaluation revealed that the quality and frequency of Jigsaw implementation varied greatly. Jigsaw failed to have a positive effect on the outcome variables, even for the five classes where it was implemented proficiently. The results, which are consistent with an earlier study (J. Moskowitz, J. Malvin, G. Schaeffer, & E. Schaps, 1983, American Education Research Journal, 20, 687–696), are discussed in terms of a theoretical shortcoming of this technique.     

A small study assessing teacher effectiveness: Does learning last?

Students of six classes who had previously participated in a larger study of teaching styles were tested a year after completion of the course. The purpose of the follow-up was to determine whether or not the prior battery of tests, including a student evaluation of instructor form, the Introductory Psychology Criteria Test, an Attitude Toward Psychology Scale, and a knowledge test, administered in a large group setting independent of those used for grades by instructors, would be positively related to student performance on comparable tests given a year later. The follow-up measures included items from the above measures plus questions regarding experiences and readings related to psychology in the year since the students' introductory course and two brief experiments which the students were to critique. Results indicated that the end of the semester measures of teaching effectiveness in terms of student performance and attitudes were positively related to similar responses obtained a year later.     

Affection as a separate dimension of meaningfulness

The meaningfulness of affectively significant (liked) materials has been shown to be separate from traditional explanations of meaningfulness, such as familiarity and rehearsal, in the verbal learning laboratory. The present investigation studied affective meaningfulness in the learning of course materials. Before the course began, students rated summaries of the study units of their course for affection. As predicted, subjects obtained higher examination grades on liked topics than on disliked topics, independently of perhaps the most prominent “rehearsal” explanation, amount of study on the various units. Also as expected, poor students showed a greater reliance on affective meaningfulness in their learning than did good students. Greater awareness of the role of affection in learning is recommended. Present findings suggest that considering this dimension of meaningfulness to be merely a by-product of familiarity or rehearsal may be the most detrimental to the students with the most learning difficulty.     

Problem solving as a function of abstract or concrete words

Two groups of undergraduates were required to verbally reorder previously memorized pairs of nouns to detect the underlying structural relationship or chain among certain memorized pairs. While the types of word chains were always structurally identical for the two groups, the groups differed as to whether the list of word pairs were concrete or abstract nouns. Subjects who received concrete words both memorized the pairs and solved the problems in less time than did subjects who received abstract word pairs. Superior performance was supposedly due to the differential effect of imaginai versus verbal encoding. Implications were discussed regarding both educational and psychological issues.     

Language development in Down's Syndrome retardates: A factorial study

One hundred and one Down's Syndrome retardates were given a battery of language and cognitive tests. The resulting intercorrelations were factor analyzed using Principal Components, Varimax Rotation, and Promax procedures. Chronological age was included as one of the variables in the analysis. The resultant factors are described and discussed.